Constructed Wetlands for Industrial Wastewater Treatment and Removal of Nutrients

Abstract

Constructed Wetlands (CWs) are low-cost and sustainable systems for wastewater treatment. Traditionally they have been used for urban and domestic wastewater treatment, but in the last two decades, the applications for industrial wastewater treatment increased due to the evolution of the technology and the extended research on the field. Nowadays, CWs have been applied to the treatment of different kind of wastewaters as such as refinery and petrochemical industry effluents, food industry effluents including abattoir, dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables processing industries, distillery and winery effluents, pulp and paper, textile, tannery, aquaculture, steel and mixed industrial effluents. In this chapter, the authors present the main types of CWs, explain how they work and the expected performances, and describe the principal applications of CWs for industrial wastewater treatment with particular attention to suspended solids, organic matter and nutrient removal. A review of these applications as well as some case studies will be discussed.